Episode Transcript
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[00:01:10] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kirikidis, joined by my Wonderful co host Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing?
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Great. How are you?
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I'm doing good.
Today's topic I'm going to read a tweet here, but our focus today is the one year transfer rule that seems to be resurfacing due to the transfer portal. Maybe not going quite as planned as some of the schools may have anticipated, but nonetheless I'm going to read a tweet.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey wants college sports to return to a one time transfer rule. Sankey is calling for national eligibility standards that put academics first while bringing consistency to roster management.
He expressed concern about older players remaining in college athletics for extended periods, noting that the presence of 26 to 28 year olds can limit opportunities for high school recruits.
So I think they've been tapping our phones because me and you have been talking about this for a couple months now that you know it's it's not and for those of you who listen, we're not, we're not on the anti portal is in the transfer portal is ruining everything in college sports train.
I will say that there's some stuff that needs to be fixed I think right I think you see with some of some of the sums of money that's going around and then all that kind of stuff, I think there's some change coming and me and you had recently spoken specifically around one of the best ways to fix it is that you get one free transfer and it would probably slow a lot of this down. It would reduce the expenditure that schools are required to kind of go and get top guys. So I'll kick it over to you for your initial thoughts on this one.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think that the,
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I
[00:03:08] Speaker A: would like to see the NCAA go back to a one time transfer rule. Not to say that you can't transfer more than once, but if you're gonna transfer more than once, then you're gonna have to sit out like the old rule was going multiple times. And I think this, this is obviously coming from Greg Sange, who's the SEC commissioner, because you're seeing people specifically in football and hoops leveraging the transfer portal as a free agency more or less of like, oh, you're not gonna give me money, I'm just gonna go in the portal and get more. So then they come to the table and give more.
Which obviously this is not what NIL was intended for.
It's kind of come off the rails at this point in time, you know, but the idea behind the transfer portal was to, you know, allow kids to be able to transfer at least, you know, once really, and end up at a school where maybe they, you know, made the wrong decision or the coach left or, you know, they, they're not going to play and they gives them an opportunity to be able to go play somewhere else because they overshot their, their ability on the front end and they can go transfer to another Division 1 school and not have to sit out a year type thing where now it's just, you know, hey, we're just going to continually jump in the transfer portal and try to land at another spot, you know, so I would personally, you know, you and I have had this conversation multiple times as you alluded to that, you know, they're tapping our phones. We've had this conversation quite a bit that I think one way to, to stem the tide on a lot of this transfer portal stuff is to give you a one, a one time grace period where, hey, you can transfer one to one and you don't have to sit out, but after that, if you go one to one, you got to sit out.
And I would also put in there, like if you, you know, if you go down, you can play, but if you go back up, right, like you're gonna have to sit out here. Like the, the old rule used to be if you went from three to two or two to one, three to one, like you had to sit out a year and you know, so you can't really necessarily backdoor it by saying, well, I'm gonna transfer out of Here and go play the Division 3 school and then come back to a Division 1 school type thing. So no matter what, you know, you're. Anytime after you get a one time get out of jail free card, if you will, and then you can get back. You know, if you want to transfer again after that, then you're going to have to sit out a year and then it's going to stem the tide on a lot of this stuff because, you know, are there still going to be people that are going to leverage it? Yeah, they are.
Right. Like if you haven't transferred yet, you can leverage the transfer portal. Be like, well, I'm going to jump in the portal and go. But for the most part it's going to stem the tide on a lot of the transfer portal stuff. And I do think the other side of it too is that coaches will be a little bit more
[00:06:03] Speaker B: heady, a
[00:06:04] Speaker A: little bit more, you know, they're not, it's going to be, you know, they're going to want to make sure that they've, they're doing their due diligence on kids, right? Like you don't want to have a kid come in and then, you know, if right now you can just come in and be like, he's not good enough, jump in the portal, right? Like now it's gonna be like, well, if, if he comes in, he's got to be one of the 34 and you know, he, he might have to sit out another year and the kid's gonna have to weigh that too.
Right? But I, I think one of the other ways to tie it too is like if you get, if we're gonna leverage the transfer portal as, as, as, as Fred, the free agency, like they're an auto counter to your 34 regardless of whether or not they're a DSA. You know what I mean? Like, you're an auto counter towards the 34. That's what it is. So then you, like now all of a sudden you have to legit or whatever the number is for the sport. Like they're an auto counter. So now you have to be like, well, he's. That person is going to count for us for at least a year. We have to be smart about whether or not this is a kid we want because we can't just dump him, you know, we can in December if he's not good enough. But like that word at 33 at that point in time, right? So like, I think, I certainly think there's ways that you can go about doing a better job with this and I think it starts with a one year like you get one time, one time you can transfer. After that you got to sit out.
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[00:08:33] Speaker B: yeah, and I mean in my mind like I think a lot of this, you know, Sankey talks about academics, which, you know, I think you're kind of talking out of one side of your mouth here but you know, it's the sec. I, I be hard pressed to tell me that any of those institutions, even the likes of Vanderbilt, are super concerned with their students going to their athletes, going to class consistently with the travel and all that kind of stuff. So that I don't really buy that as much. But I do think that a lot of this is driven by money. And to your point, these kids, the really good players who have the ability to do it, are leveraging the portal for as free agency. And what, what's ultimately happening is that the price of these kids is going up and they're going. Well, we don't, you know, if this keeps happening every year and we still have the same budget, you're going to price yourself out and it's going to get incredibly costly just to field a competitive roster. So I think there's some of that coming but I do think that the writing is on the wall with some of these determinations that have come through that you know, you're getting kids who are getting this extended eligibility and you're talking about 24, 25 year old kids. And yeah, I just don't think that was ever the core of the heart of what, what NCAA baseball or NCAA sports is ever really supposed to be about. But I agree with you, right?
I think the transfer portal on its surface, when you talk about Being able to leverage at one time, I think that's a really good thing for the players.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: And I also think that it doesn't handcuff the coaches to the point where you can't cut a kid.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Let's be honest.
College sports is a privilege. It's not a right. The college coaches have the ability to make decisions of their roster and you can't zap them with that ability either. But the, the one year transfer rule really gave those kids who either got caught or decided to leave a program. It gave them an out.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It gave them the ability to transfer to another Division 1 school when that previously wasn't the case.
So, you know, I think, I think it's a, I think it's a good step in the right direction. If they ultimately implement it, I think it'll reduce the impact that it's had on high school recruiting. Although I do think that some of that, the notion that you just don't recruit high school guys is a. Specifically in baseball, I think it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit over kind of over emphasized. I'm, I'm not sure if that's quite the case. Like there's just too much high school baseball that needs to be covered and those players are really the lifeblood of programs. I think it's more of a, a mechanism to find guys who are ready to play right away if you lose guys type of thing. More so than it is just creating a full roster of transfers. I don't think that that works in baseball. And I don't think it, you know, it's, it's still think it's biggest problem as people want it to be. But yeah, I think it's, I think it's a natural next step if you're trying to plug the hole because it's, it's clearly gone awry. You know, when you're talking about college football players getting $7 million to play, you know, these guys are making more than NFL players.
And I'm not against these kids getting paid. I do think that it's been a long time coming. When you talk about the revenue that's generated by some of these programs on the backs of players that wear that jersey, you know, they should get a cut of it.
But this idea that every year turns into free agency at the higher levels of college sports, I think it's, I think it got out of control. I think it got out of control quicker than everybody thought it was gonna.
And then with the revenue sharing, what it did is it put a cap on things.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: So.
And it made it harder to just outspend people. So now that there's a, a quasi salary cap in place, I think it became pretty evident this past cycle for football especially that, well, just like the NFL, like the next best quarterback's going to set the market whether you want, you know, whether he's Tom Brady or not, he's going to, you know, the next quarterback who goes into free agency is going to make $60 million a year, whether you like it or not. But the difference between college and in the NFL is that the NFL's cap goes up every year and college is just not going to expand that much because their revenues aren't going to, they're not going to jump at that same rate. And I think you're starting to see a little bit of a financial pitch.
And I'm not surprised that it's Greg sankey from the SEC that is the 1. 1. He wields pretty much all the power and all of college sports, you know, being the, the commissioner of the sec. So I hope they follow up on it. Right. Like, I hope this is a real thing and it's not just, you know, it's not just filler because I do think it would, I think it would have a pretty immediate impact and I think it would be good for the athletes, I think it would be good for the programs. I think it would be good for college sports in general. I think everybody across the board benefits from it.
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[00:14:06] Speaker A: yeah, without a doubt.
You know, I. Something needs to be done right.
Like it's, it's gotten to be a lot and again, we're not anti portal, but I think that the, we've abused the power of what it was and, and what nil was intended for.
And you know, we were in college and you know, there was a. He was the kicker at Colorado, wasn't he? He was like an Olympic skier and they made him quit playing Football so he couldn't monetize his YouTube page.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Jeremy something, I think.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: You know, he quit football and was an Olympic skier and because he couldn't monetize, like that's what it was intended for, not for what's currently happening. Then I owe collectives and paying and doing all of these things that you know, are pricing out, you know, all but the haves and the have nots. So you know, and I think like if you follow hoops, you know, and I follow college basketball as I don't, I'm not a huge follower but you know, I watch the Foxes, you know, like that there's a lot of, there's a lot of roster turnover every year in college basketball. Like guys are just going everywhere and that's, you know, it's, it's hard to be good, it's hard to sustain programs, it's hard to do those things. And I think you're putting programs and coaches and kids in tough spots to be successful at at colleges because we're getting away from what this was actually intended to do.
Right. Like, and then you like to his point about the academics and maybe not necessarily so much in the sec, but it's some of like the, your mid major schools, you know, you're going to four schools. How are you graduating?
You know what I mean? Like there's credit, like there's a lot of credit. Like there's a lot going on there and like now we're getting away from these kids even graduating school in four years or five because we're missing credits. Like who knows how many they took. Like it, it just becomes, it muddies the waters in a lot of things and I think you can clean up a decent amount of issues in just kind of putting a cap on what you can transfer, how many times you can transfer. And then also you know, hey, you know, if, if whatever the number it is in basketball that's countable and you know, baseball, it's 34, like they got to be one of your 12 if they, if they transfer in. You know what I mean? So, you know, I certainly think that it needs to be discussed and I hope they revisit it and something does actually happen because it's, it's creating a lot of financial pitches, you know, and you're starting to see some, some high end power four conference schools that are saying that like it's getting tight from a money standpoint, you know, and if they're starting to feel it, you know, things are going to start to change, you know what I mean? Like, if the ones that have a lot of money are starting to say this has gotten out of control, their things will start to change for them, you know. But I saw a thing about Louisville today, you know, Rutgers recently came out and said they were down like 70 million in their athletic budget. You know, and that's when you're traveling to the west coast and stuff. But still like it, it's not a sustainable model.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: No. And I saw Alabama's numbers come out and you know, you basically only have three programs in the whole athletic department that are operating in a surplus.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: You know, and, and yeah, I think there is a little bit of a pinch here financially. But you, you bring up. I wanna, I wanna hammer this home once so that I don't get like sued by Greg Sanke or something. But the academic piece, right, I, I made a kind of a joke about SEC and, and you know, attending classes. But you bring up probably the more valid academic portion of this is that when you start transferring a bunch, you lose a lot of credits and it becomes very difficult to graduate on time, never mind stay eligible. And I do think that that is a part of the issue.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: It's really that simple. Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: You're not, your progress towards your degree is. It's taking a hit.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: You know, so it's, and I do think there's ways they get, you know, schools get around it where they're like, there's just constantly summer class, winter class, all those things. But like that's also not doing a service to the kids either. Like you're just constantly in school 24 7, 365 while also playing.
And in, in some regards, like that's the model that's been created. Right. If at those schools, if you're getting paid that amount of money, like you're pretty much a professional. So you're going to be expected to be there 24, 7, 365, working on your game, getting bigger, faster, stronger and going to class. That's kind of the trade off. But is that positive moving forward for everybody? And I don't, I just don't think it's a sustainable model. If you want my honest answer, no.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: And the vast majority of the kids that are going through this, even the guys who are making a ton of money, like, you know, you look at the statistics of it, like if you're looking at it from a baseball perspective, like most of those kids aren't going to play. Even the best kids in all of college baseball, most of those kids won't have sustained careers of any value.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Never mind make it to the big leagues, never mind make it through arbitration, never mind to make it to free agency. Like, same thing with the NFL. I mean, the, the, the, the average tenure in the NFL is astonishingly low.
And when you're talking about getting a degree and you're talking about being able to do it in a timely manner, it actually does matter.
Even for the kids who are making a million dollars. Like, yeah, you, you get a nice, you get a nice boost when you get out, but you might make a million dollars in college. And then all of a sudden it's like you get a, you know, you get a cup of coffee in the NFL for one year and you're on a practice squad and then you never play again. It's like, well, what do you have now? Do you have to go back to school now?
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Most of those kids don't go back to school. And it's nothing. It's just once you get out of school, a lot of guys don't go back.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's just in general for most people.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Just in general, like, once you lose that momentum and once you, once you leave the classroom and you don't get that, that, that degree, and this isn't anecdotal, like, there's plenty of data out there suggests that guys who leave school early to go play a professional sport, whether they are there for an extended period of time or not, most of them do not go back and get their degree.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So I think putting stuff like this, you have to take into account the vast majority of the individuals and putting in that are going to benefit them.
Not just from a financial perspective to cut off how much you're going to pay guys, but like a system that is more beneficial broadly, which is give student athletes the flexibility, give coaches the flexibility to make decisions on the roster, give players the flexibility to leave programs for the variety of reasons that they may leave a program. But hey, you get one shot at it, and then after that, you're going to have to sit out a year before you're able to play.
You'll think longer, you'll think harder, you'll make a better decision on the front end, most likely.
I just think it's.
Yeah, and I think it would be a good adjustment.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: It's.
I don't think it can be lost on anyone while having it. Like, since we're having this conversation and very briefly, but the amount of good coaches that have left coaching, and not just in Baseball, but football, hoops. I'm sure it's in other sports because they don't want to deal with this.
And you can say that it's, you know, they, whatever, they're at the end of their careers, whatever. But there's a lot of people who have, I've talked to even that are younger. They're like, I don't know if I want to continue to do this because it's just, it's too much. You know, you're just, you have to recruit your own team, you have to recruit other players. You're too, you know, you're. Now we're into two years out plus my own, like it's, you're putting a lot on, on coaches and you're. We're going to eventually start losing people to out of the sport sports because it's like this, like this is, this model is just unsustainable and it will. Listen, I'll give us credit for trying. I will, I will give us credit for trying and seeing what we could do.
But I think that it's, it's become readily apparent that there needs to be parameters put on what's going on so that we can keep kids in college, you know, for four or five years. We can get kids degrees. We're not transferring 15 times. Like, I do agree that kids should be get paid based off of the revenue that they're generating. Like, yeah, I'm all in on that. But there, there's got to be some semblance of a cap and what we're doing so that this is a more sustainable model for college athletics.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Well said.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: I don't have the answers, but I'm happy to, you know, jump on a zoom with the NCA to help out. Maybe I can bat around individuals, pass the Division 3 level, sneak it in.
All right.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Anything else you want to add there, Coach?
[00:23:23] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you everybody. I hope you enjoyed the banter.
Hopefully we'll get the one year transfer rule put in place. I think it'll be good for everybody. Thanks for listening everybody. Talk to you next week.
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